The Hunting Party took the scenic route but arrived at the same destination as fellow sophomore NBC drama series Brilliant Minds: a cancellation after two seasons.
NBC sibling Universal Television, the studio behind the crime drama procedural starring Melissa Roxburgh, is expected to shop it to other outlets. Netflix, which currently licenses the show in the U.S., would be a logical outreach.
The Hunting Party, created by JJ Bailey, was the last 2025-26 broadcast series whose fate had not been determined. NBC postponed the decision until after the upfronts as its executives took extra time to evaluate the show’s performance on both linear and streaming.
The odds for a series left in limbo after the networks’ lineups for the following season have been locked are always long. Based solely on The Hunting Party’s middling linear performance, the drama likely would’ve been a goner a month ago.
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Jeff Bader, NBCUniversal’s President of Program Planning Strategy, was pretty frank about its delivery when explaining the decision to replace The Hunting Party, which aired in the Thursday 10 p.m. time period behind Law & Order: SVU this season, with the mothership Law & Order next fall.
“We’re looking for places where we can grow the network, and that is a time period where we think we can do better,” he told Deadline last month. “Nothing negative about Hunting Party, but for our linear schedule, we absolutely need to try and do a little bit better there.”
However, the drama, about a team tasked with tracking down and capturing dangerous killers has done better on streaming, which prolonged its shelf life.
The Hunting Party got a shot in the arm when its first season launched on Netflix in the U.S. in February to strong viewership.
The exposure did not result in meaningful linear ratings gains on NBC for Season 2; they remained relatively flat throughout the season. But I hear there has been a halo effect on Peacock, where the series already had been a solid performer. (Netflix’s license fee as well as the show’s international sales also are bringing in revenue, which was likely weighed in against its soft linear ratings.)
With NBC and Peacock under the same programming leadership, both a third season on the broadcast network and a switch to The Hunting Party becoming a Peacock original were considered, sources said. In the end, after some number-crunching, neither option panned out.
NBC’s final 2026-27 tally is four new scripted series — dramas The Rockford Files and Line of Fire and comedies Sunset P.I. and Newlyweds — and three cancellations — dramas Brilliant Minds and The Hunting Party and comedy Stumble.
“Honestly, we have a very, very tight schedule,” Bader said last month. “Because we have a lot of sports, for our entertainment time periods, we had to actually give up on some shows that we really love to make room to launch our future potential hits. So we made room for four, we could have done with less, very hard for us to do more.”
